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Roads: Ontario/GTA Highways Discussion

I think the Mid-Peninsula highway would make a lot more sense if Niagara Region was growing faster than it is currently. Growth in Niagara has been comparatively lagging behind other regions in Ontario. Other areas that are seeing new highways planned have grown much faster over the last 20 years. For perspective:
  • Brampton (325,428 in 2001 to 656,480 in 2021) getting HWY 413
  • Halton (375,229 in 2001 to 596,637 in 2021) getting HWY 413 and HWY 401 upgrades
  • York (729,254 in 2001 to 1,173,334 in 2021) getting HWY 413, Bradford Bypass, and HWY 400 upgrades
  • KWCG (544,685 in 2001 to 730,905 in 2021) getting HWY 7, HWY 6 upgrades, and HWY 401 upgrades
  • Niagara (410,574 in 2001 to 477,941 in 2021) getting Garden City Skyway upgrades
I believe the value in this highway is mainly as a redundancy for trucking between Niagara and the GTA, but that only makes sense in a world where Niagara is rapidly growing (resulting in more local as opposed to long-distance QEW use), and if the QEW has fully reached its widening potential. Neither of these things have happened yet. Expansion in GO service down through to Niagara is also something that is likely going to help a lot in reducing the need for this highway.
 
Except Brampton isn’t really “getting” Highway 413. The city government doesn’t really want It skirts the western end and runs through Caledon to the north.

Not an argument I’d use to justify another Greenbelt freeway
 
Deadpool X said:
I doubt the land under the roadway would still be in a good condition for farming.

What if mid-pen becomes congested again and MTO realizes narrowing QEW was a waste. Would you prefer them acquiring the farmland back again to widen QEW?

Infrastructure has become much more expensive to build. I don't get why you would want to undo an already built highway only to build a parallel highway.
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Just what I'd prefer to see in the event it was built, obviously it Isn't practical. While I want to rectify my comment and say that in the real world, it'd probably be built over rather than be turned into farmland, I don't actually expect the mid-pen to be built (at least not anytime soon), and if it were, we'd never downsize another highway. But, in a perfect world where there's full LSW service to Niagara and a parallel highway in less contentious land, It'd be nice if we could rectify what I see as a poor use of land/right-of-way- even just a little bit. After all, the topic of the mid-pen is now just a bit fantastical, I'd think.
 
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I live in the NIagara region and expanding the QEW is not possible through the city of St.Catharines due to it being elevated in some areas, you would have to build it over main roads in the city.. The population the last 5 years is picking up despite lagging behind some of the GTA, NIagara region grew 6.7% and the city of Hamilton grew 6 percent. Highway 408 or the Mid-Peninsula is more a highway for Hamilton and trade coming in from the US. So I think expanding the Go service is perfect like they are doing and a new highway may be needed in the 2050-2060 range.
 
There is no possible way you could serve a horseshoe shape populated area with high quality rail transit. We should definitely run a freeway along the escarpment... you can't build anything there because of that rock hill but with highway construction you can just blow up part of that rock and use it for fill and a roadbed. Everyone wins.
 
Priestly demolishing the Southbound lanes of the Simcoe Street overpass in Oshawa. The barriers are moved and sand is spread for road protection. It only took about an hour to get to this stage of the demo.
DJI_0173-3.jpg
 
ericmacm said:
New major highway project in the works for the London-St. Thomas area - the twinning and extension of the St. Thomas Expressway from Highway 4 to its existing eastern terminus at Centennial Avenue. Stantec is doing the full design and EA. This is huge for the area and ties in with the HWY 401/HWY 4 interchange reconstruction project that should be starting soon, as well as a Centennial/Higbury Avenue realignment and widening project being undertaken by the City of St. Thomas, currently in the early stages. This will service the new industrial corridor that is emerging with Amazon Talbotville and the VW-PowerCo Battery Plant. It remains to be seen if there will be any extension eastward, but what is evident is that removing the designation for the long-planned eastward extension might have been short-sighted.

View attachment 483086

The design for the new interchange at the 401 for additional context:
View attachment 483089
Additional context regarding realigning and widening Highbury Avenue at the eastern terminus with Centennial Avenue (a separate project by the City of St. Thomas):
View attachment 483098
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New update on the HWY 3 twinning project in St. Thomas. It appears that the preferred approach to dealing with the potential road extension east of Centennial Road will be to build an arterial all the way through to Yarmouth Centre Road, with an intersection in the middle that will lead directly into the new battery plant. Slide deck suggests that roundabouts are the preferred intersection design. It’s unclear if this will become a new alignment of HWY 3 at this time.

I had heard from some contractors I work with a couple months ago that there were plans for an eastward extension leading to the battery plant, but I hadn’t heard about it going all the way to Yarmouth Centre Road.

A couple of slides from the City of St. Thomas slide deck that is linked in the CTV article:
IMG_8679.jpeg

IMG_8680.jpeg
 
It's a municipal EA so likely not a Highway 3 extension.

MTO dropped their highway protection corridor east of St Thomas a few years ago as well, so Hwy 3 dead ends there forever now, effectively.
 
innsertnamehere said:
It's a municipal EA so likely not a Highway 3 extension.

MTO dropped their highway protection corridor east of St Thomas a few years ago as well, so Hwy 3 dead ends there forever now, effectively.
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Around Aylmer it would seem. I'm not sure how a simple corridor of land would block development that much.

www.stthomastoday.ca

Development opportunities opened up with removal of Hwy. 3 bypass designation

With the stroke of a pen, a corridor of land in Aylmer and Malahide has been opened up for new development. Tu...
www.stthomastoday.ca www.stthomastoday.ca
 
LemonCondo said:
Time to build a rail bridge over Lake Ontario.
It's possible.
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Lake Pontchartrain has an average depth of 12-14ft deep, and a maximum of 65ft. Lake Ontario has an average depth of 283ft and maximum depth of over 800ft.

A bridge across Lake Ontario would functionally be one of the largest infrastructure achievements on the planet and isn't really practically possible.

That said, MTO did briefly look at an under-lake tunnel from Oakville to Stoney Creek about a decade ago before ruling it out for cost reasons...

laketunnel 1.png
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innsertnamehere said:
Lake Pontchartrain has an average depth of 12-14ft deep, and a maximum of 65ft. Lake Ontario has an average depth of 283ft and maximum depth of over 800ft.

A bridge across Lake Ontario would functionally be one of the largest infrastructure achievements on the planet and isn't really practically possible.

That said, MTO did briefly look at an under-lake tunnel from Oakville to Stoney Creek about a decade ago before ruling it out for cost reasons...

View attachment 495739View attachment 495740View attachment 495741View attachment 495742
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You do know what would happen if they decide to build a bridge across Lake Ontario? Cost overruns...
5fooupdtg29b1.jpg

From link (from an episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, that mentions Toronto, and a "normal" budget situation we always seem to have.) 🤣
😂
 
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